A Few Keys toward Revisions
I've been thinking a lot about revision. It's my favorite part of writing. When I've got a big mess of a discovery draft, I have to figure out what this mess wants to be. So I tend to ask a lot of questions to aid my revision process. Here are a few of the questions I like to ask. I hope they inspire you with your own revisions. And I hope you create some questions of your own that will serve you and whatever you are revising.
The very first thing I usually want to know is, are we grounded in a place? To me, grounding is essential. What I mean is, does the place affect the story or the characters and specifically how? More than just, where are we, grounding your narrative in a place can illuminate character and solve a lot of problems. Grounding your narrative means knowing everything that is there, so that you can that use it to make more meaning. How does the audience/reader know where we are? What is essential there? What are we aware of and what haven't we used that is there in that place? Can what is there, even the stuff in the drawers and hidden places, be used? Whose place is it and are these part of the power dynamics in the story/scene/book/play? How concrete is what's happening? How many specifics do you have and do they help us access the interior life of the characters?
How many senses are you using? Sight, smell, taste, touch, and sound are the important ways we connect to the characters. How are you using these senses? What about other senses? Interiority? Pain, hunger, thirst, etc. How does feeling matter? What is unexpected? What is inevitable?
What are the events of the scene? Are there enough of them? How do the events forward the action? How have they ratcheted up the stakes? What is revealed? Is there a more dramatic way to reveal it? What is decided? How is that decision made? Are the steps clear?
Where is the shift? What transforms the character or the world? What happens to allow the shift to occur? Is there a moment of recognition, and how does it push the scene forward? What or who is transformed and how? Is there a visual component to the transformation? Are there other sensory components to the transformation? Where is a place in the narrative where you could expand it? Is there a way to give a character a monologue or a dramatic moment or a comic moment that supports the action of the scene? What could someone do to make it funnier, darker, sillier, stranger, however you wish it could be?
What's missing? If you wrote the blurb to it, what would it be? Is the blurb better than what you wrote and how can you improve on what you wrote to match the blurb? What do you most want the audience to remember? How do you want the audience to feel? What can you do to increase the odds that your audience will never forget it? Does the piece have emotional resonance? If not, where can you revise to create some?
While this is not all I think about in terms of revising, these are a few key elements. The other thing that helps me a lot is time. Allowing myself time away from my work helps me return with fresh eyes. It also allows me to pace myself, be kinder with myself, and kindness always helps!